Beneath a Southern Sky

by Deborah Raney

  Knowing that it would be days before anyone could get to the village from Bogotá, Daria sought out Anazu in the village.

  She found him crouching near the river’s edge, cleaning a mess of fish. Kneeling beside him, she spoke in her halting Timoné. “Anazu, kopaku…please. It is time to search for Dr. Nate,” she begged, trying desperately to strike the right balance of authority and deference in her voice. “Would you send Motsu and Javier to bring him back? Kopaku? Your nephews know the way on the river,” she coaxed.

  He looked up from his task, his dark eyes thoughtful and kind. “Dr. Nate is with men who know the jungle well. They will bring him home when the time is ripe.”

  His calm manner and kindness reassured her somewhat. “Yes,” she told herself. “Quimico and Tados will bring him home.” Yet her heart doubted. Even the families of the young men had begun to complain that Dr. Nate had not yet returned their sons and brothers to them as he’d promised.

  She decided not to push Anazu on the matter and instead thanked him for considering her request. He nodded and flashed her a familiar smile, his white, even teeth almost glowing against the contrast of burnished copper skin. Deeply disheartened, she returned to the hut.

  When the sun came up on the following day, Daria rose and went to stand at the small window over their bed.

  “Please, Lord,” she prayed. “Soften Anazu’s heart. I need his help. Help me to know what to say to him, Father. Give me the words that will convince him that it’s time to look for Nate. Give me strength.”

  She was just getting ready to walk to the commons for morning lessons when Bob Warrington’s voice crackled over the radio. Her heart pounding, she jumped up and ran to the crude table where the radio sat.

  “Daria?” Bob’s voice broke up in an eruption of static, and Daria strained to hear his message. “I’ve spoken with Gospel Outreach, and they think it’s time to send in a search party. They want you to try to get to San José del Guaviare. They’ll fly over the area from there, but they want you with them if at all possible.”

  “I really don’t know how much help I’d be, Bob,” she said, her voice trembling. It terrified her to think of leaving Timoné without Nate. “I… I know the village, Chicoro, is on the river,” she told Bob, “but even Nate wasn’t sure how far upstream it was.” Though she knew Nate had given Bob the information before he’d set out, she repeated all she could remember of what the runner from Chicoro had told them when he came for Nate.

  “I still think you need to be in that plane,” Bob insisted. “Is there someone there you trust to get you to San José?”

  She told him of Anazu’s refusal to go after Nate. “He might be more willing to take me to San José, familiar territory, but”—her voice rose an octave and grew thick with panic—“what if Nate comes back while I’m gone, Bob?”

  “Leave a message for him, Daria. If that happens, he can radio me, and we’ll get you back to Timoné.” He spoke with measured words, as though he were speaking to a child. She willed confidence into her tone as they arranged for her to meet a contact at the airstrip in San José del Guaviare, two days down the river. Reluctantly she signed off and went to find Anazu again, her mind reeling.

  Even before God, she didn’t dare put into words what her leaving Timoné would mean, that something was terribly wrong, that Nathan was sick or wounded, or worse…in the Colombian jungle. But now that the plans were in motion, she was relieved. At least she was doing something. She couldn’t continue to wait indefinitely, doing nothing at all. Perhaps she had already waited too long. Yet even if she could convince Anazu or his nephews to take her to San José, she worried that there was nothing she could do when she got there.

  She castigated herself for not learning the Timoné language more fluently. During the year before they arrived, she and Nate had studied the Castilian Spanish spoken in most of Colombia, but they were not prepared for how different the Indian dialect of the Timoné was. She had depended too much on Nathan to communicate in the primitive tongue that was a peculiar mix of Spanish and Portuguese with a smattering of Swahili—from the African slaves brought to Colombia centuries before, they’d been told. Nate was beginning to speak the language quite passably and was teaching English to Tados and Quimico, his young protégés. But Daria still struggled. She had taught the children a few English words. They were quick and eager students. But now she knew she should have concentrated more on learning Timoné from them.

  As she walked through the village, searching again for Anazu, such aimless ramblings filled her thoughts, veiling the growing knowledge that something terrible had happened to her husband.

  Later that morning, Dana went through the motions of her Bible lessons. She tried not to think that this might be her last time with these children, perhaps forever. But when she found a round mahogany face and two brown beads of eyes staring up at her after class, her throat tightened. The young boy clutched something behind his back.

  “Hollio, Tommi.” It was a shortened version of his given name, which was, for her, unpronounceable. She had bestowed the nickname on him, and it had stuck. Even his mother now sometimes called him “Tommi.”

  She knelt down in the soft dirt beside him. “What have you got there?”

  The broad grin he gave her made narrow slits of his dark eyes. “I give,” he said in English, holding out a greenish banana. He thrust the sweet-smelling fruit at her. “Teacher,” he said simply.

  She held the banana to her nose and sniffed it appreciatively. “Thank you, Tommi. Just the way I like them. Green.” Always the teacher, she pointed to the green stem and repeated her comments in her broken Timoné.

  “Green,” Tommi repeated, still grinning. Then he ran off to join the other children for a splash in the cool stream. Watching them, Daria fought back tears. These children had become such a part of her life, giving her so much more than she could offer them. Their sweet kindnesses, simple trust. Their love.

  That afternoon Anazu began to ready the small boat that his nephews would carry on their heads through the rain forest until they reached the first entry into the Rio Guaviare.

  “Thank you, Lord,” Daria whispered as she watched the strong, sun-burnished backs of Anazu’s nephews, Motsu and Javier, loading provisions into the boat.

  She walked back through the village and climbed the stairs to sit on the stoop. The afternoon rains had ceased, and now the sun coaxed vapors of steam from the damp forest floor. Daria sat there, listening to the children playing across the stream, and yet a panic began to wrap its paralyzing tendrils around her. A small, still-sane part of her brain told her that she must go to San José del Guaviare exactly as she’d been instructed. If the search didn’t turn up something right away, she knew they would probably offer to fly her out of Colombia and back to the States. But she couldn’t bear to think of leaving Nathan behind.

  The visceral part of her brain told her to get up and run. Run down the tangled path where she had seen her husband’s broad back disappear almost three weeks ago. Run and search every green, wet inch of the godforsaken forest that had taken him away from her. Search until she found him and brought him home—home to Timoné.

  But she stayed on the stoop late into the afternoon, watching Anazu’s preparations from a distance.

  As she sat there again that night, the fires in the village dying, Daria thanked God that Anazu had agreed to her request. Then for the thousandth time, she whispered a prayer for Nate’s safety. She gazed into the star-crested sky and thought back to that last night she and Nathan had spent together before he left on his journey.

  And now, aching for him, searching the sky for “their” star, she was consumed with fear that she might never have a chance to tell him that a starry sky would forever remind her of how much she loved him—and how much she was loved by him.

  Early the next morning as she packed her belongings, the breakfast fires in the village reminded her that she hadn’t eaten anything since Tommi’s banana the afterno
on before. Anazu had kept her well supplied with roasted meat, but she’d had no appetite. She fought back the nausea that had dogged her for a week; lack of sleep and food, and the tremendous stress of Nathan’s absence had taken their toll. Finally she finished packing and went to find something her stomach wouldn’t reject.

  As she pulled her skillet from its hook on the wall, a shout from the forest pierced the air. The pan fell from her hands and clattered to the floor as she ran outside.

  Quimico and Tados came into the clearing, striding breathlessly toward the center of the village. Her heart leapt into her throat and she ran to meet them, straining to see Nate’s tall, lean figure.

  The two men motioned wildly to her, shouting words she could not understand.

  The villagers came running from all directions and gathered around the men.

  Quimico spoke the same urgent words over and over again. Fogorio. Defuerto. Daria heard the syllables clearly, but her mind wouldn’t allow them to make sense to her. It was as though she had never heard the Timoné tongue before.

  But while his words seemed alien to her ears, the heartsick expression on Quimico’s face spoke a language she understood only too clearly.

  Three

  Where is Nate?” She looked past the two guides, her eyes wild. “Nate? Where is Nathan?” She ran toward Quimico and Tados, screaming his name over and over again until it came out as a hoarse croak. Yet somewhere deep inside herself she knew the answer to her panicked question.

  Quimico held up a hand as she came to stand before him. The stocky, brown-skinned native placed his arms across his chest and shook his head solemnly—a gesture that was startlingly like Nathan Camfield. Turning to Anazu, who had pushed his way through the other villagers, Quimico spoke rapidly in a low voice.

  She separated two words from the jumble that poured from Quimico’s lips. Fogorio. Fire. Defuerto. Dead.

  And Nate’s name. Dr. Nate. Medicine Doctor.

  “No!” Daria sank to her knees, her heart in her throat, her head throbbing. “Oh, dear God, no! Not Nathan! Please, God! No…” she moaned.

  She felt an arm go around her and glanced up to see Anazu’s wife, Paita. The woman knelt beside her and began cooing soft words in Daria’s ear, rocking her gently back and forth.

  Daria was numb. She couldn’t understand the words Quimico and Tados were spewing now to the gathered crowd, but she knew the only thing that had meaning for her. Nathan was dead.

  The strength went from her, and she would have slumped in a heap on the ground if Paita had not held her against her strong, thick body. Paita held Daria upright until the men finished talking, then she beckoned for her daughter. Casmé came quickly to Daria’s side, and the two women helped her to her feet and ushered her across the stream to her hut.

  They helped her lie down on the grass mat in the corner. Paita poured a mug half-full of strong coffee from the thermos, and Casmé held it to Daria’s lips while she sipped.

  As the horror of the truth sank its teeth into her, Daria allowed the women to wash her body, submitting willingly to the Timoné ritual for widows in mourning.

  As they silently sponged the cool water over her neck and limbs, she felt removed from her body, as though she watched herself from someplace above. They combed Daria’s long, heavy, blond hair and fastened it, as she always wore it, into a braid that hung down her back. When they were finished with their ministrations, mother and daughter arranged the mosquito netting around her and then sat beside her, watching her closely. Several times Daria attempted to speak, but she could not make herself remember the Timoné words for what she wanted to ask. Finally she slept.

  The sounds of the afternoon rains awoke her, and the hut was dark from the overcast sky, but she could see the silhouettes of Paita and Casmé through the gauzy film of the mosquito net. She reached underneath the netting for Paita’s hand, and suddenly the words were there.

  “Que aconté? What happened?” she asked.

  She strained to hear the words as Paita began to answer. It was so important that she understand.

  “Dr. Nate—the Medicine Doctor—put all those who were sick together in one hut outside the far village,” Paita told her, speaking slowly in her own tongue. She used her expressive hands to illustrate her words, repeating the important phrases again for Daria’s sake, waiting to see that she understood before continuing. “The medicine he brought was not enough for the many people, so they continued to die. The chief’s young son died, and the chief grew angry with Dr. Nate. The chief feared the sickness would destroy all the village, so he sent men to the sick hut to set a fire and destroy the evil spirits that lived in the people. Nathan was inside the hut. Quimico and Tados were in the village, but they saw the fire. They knew Dr. Nate was inside. They ran to save him, but the flames were too high. They called to Dr. Nate, but they could hear only the screams of the burning people. No one lived. All burned. All. They took their boat and ran away. They ran to the north. Away from Timoné. They hid in the forest for many days until it was safe for them to come back.”

  Paita finished the story and once more pushed back the net and wiped a cool damp cloth over Daria’s forehead. “You sleep now,” she said. “I will be here when you wake, and I will tell you the story once more.”

  It seemed to Daria that she slept for a week. When she opened her eyes again, the sun was climbing in the eastern sky and Casmé was gone. But true to her word, Paita was there, and she recounted the story again. This time Daria could not succumb to the drug of sleep to deaden the pain of the truth.

  She sat up on the mat and took the cup Paita offered. She sipped carefully and stood on wobbly legs, fighting the nausea that swept over her. Walking stiffly to the corner, she sat down at the table and tried to coax the radio to life. Miraculously her call was answered within minutes, and she sobbed the news to Bob Warrington.

  “You get to San José del Guaviare, Daria.” Bob’s voice filled the room. “Bring everything you can with you. Tell Anazu you must leave tomorrow.”

  “He’d already agreed, Bob, before… His nephews will take me. I trust them.”

  “Good. Someone will be waiting for you there. Daria…I am so sorry.”

  Numb, she copied down his instructions, signed off, and went to the doorway of the hut. She looked across the stream and saw that life was back to normal for the villagers. Children laughed and splashed at the water’s edge, and the women worked outside their huts, talking quietly together.

  Stepping outside, Daria sat down on the stoop and waited in silence while Paita fixed her something to eat.

  She spotted Tados coming down the forest path with a basket of fresh fish, and the truth washed over her as though for the first time.

  My husband is dead.

  No! It can’t be true! How was it possible that Nathan could have been dead so many days without her sensing it in her spirit? Without God letting her know?

  Boldly she cried out to Tados. “Ceju na. Come here.” It was a command, one the young man was not accustomed to heeding when it came from a woman. He remained where he was.

  “Kopaku,” she pled, making her voice appropriately submissive.

  Tados waded across the shallow stream and walked slowly toward her, stopping at a distance.

  “Tados—” She swallowed hard, trying to think of the words. She wasn’t sure she wanted the answer to the question she was about to ask, and yet an ember of hope ignited in her as she entertained the possibility that Tados and Quimico were mistaken.

  Tados waited patiently.

  “Did…did you see Dr. Nate? Defuerto? Dead? Did you see his…his body?” She stumbled clumsily over the alien words.

  He slid the basket to the ground by his feet but did not reply.

  She repeated the question, enunciating carefully, not sure if she had phrased it properly.

  A shadow of emotion clouded his eyes. He nodded and surprised her by answering in English. He motioned wildly with his arms. “Everybody burn. Everybod
y die… All the hut,” he said emphatically. “A big fire. Very big.” Again his arms painted a wide arc. “I run to help Dr. Nate. I see only many body. Quimico see also. Nobody come out.”

  She was aware of Paita standing in the doorway behind her, but she needed no interpreter this time. Daria understood his halting words perfectly.

  Now Tados held up a hand. “You wait,” he commanded. Leaving his basket on the ground, he crossed over the stream and strode toward his own hut. A few minutes later he returned, holding something out to her in his upturned palm. “You take.”

  She descended the steps and took the object from his hand. Her breath caught as she recognized Nathan’s watch—the expensive gold watch his parents had given him upon his graduation from medical school. Nathan never removed it except to bathe. She turned it over in her hand. Its face was black with soot, and though she tried to clean the crystal, rubbing it hard with her thumb, the Roman numerals on the face had been obliterated.

  She looked up at the young native, a question in her eyes.

  “You take,” he repeated.

  She thanked him. With a single, silent nod, he turned, retrieved his basket, and crossed back to the other side of the stream.

  She heard Paita go inside. Climbing the steps, she sank down on the stoop again, and sat there staring at Nathan’s watch, numb. She knew she must get word to Nate’s parents and hers. Perhaps Bob Warrington had already taken care of that. She hadn’t thought to ask him. There was a place in San José del Guaviare where they could sometimes get through by telephone or perhaps send e-mail—if the paramilitary groups hadn’t commandeered it.

  She could not see herself remaining here without Nathan, but neither could she imagine going anywhere else. Her life in the States seemed like a story she had read long ago, one she remembered fondly but that had no bearing on reality for her. She pressed her fingers to her temples and tried to stop the flow of thoughts.

  For now she wanted only one thing—to weep. Nate was dead, and she needed to mourn him.